KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 11 — The body of Nora Anne Quoirin, who had gone missing at The Dusun resort last year, had marks inconsistent with prolonged exposure in a jungle and suggested abduction, the Irish-French teen’s mother told the Coroner Court today.
Testifying at Quoirin’s inquest as the 35th witness, Meabh Jaseprine Quoirin said she was fully aware of the condition in which her daughter’s body was found in August last year despite the court having yet to hear evidence on the teenager’s post-mortem report.
“There were scratches and markings on Nora's body of course, but we asked a lot of people and at that time I myself considered none of those markings would be conducive to a child walking continuously in the jungle barefooted and naked.
“One of the reasons we heard from the police repeatedly was that she was constantly on the move. To be constantly on the move you need to be able to move quickly. Nora always moved very slowly, but also quite naturally quite a lot of damage to body because of terrain and relatively speaking in context she did not.
“And I'm quite shocked by that, as we said it was extremely steep, extremely rocky, extremely difficult to navigate across branches across dense jungle, why does her state of her body not reflect that of someone who was constantly moving and constantly exposed to harshest elements. I think that is an area of concern for me,” she said during the inquest hearing that was conducted through video-conferencing.
She also testified she was neither in a position to comment to have a particular opinion on the motives for an abduction, but insisted it was possible and reasonable to expect any such plan conceived at the time of the incident to change by virtue of the mass attention it was generating.
“I'm in no position to speculate really about motivations behind an abduction, I can only comment like any other human operating in a modern world about why abduction happens and I've no particular opinion on the motivation specifically for Nora.
“But what I would say is that it is possible, reasonable to expect that any plan that could have been conceived at any point might have to change by virtue of the sheer volume of attention placed on Nora's case.
“The hundreds of police attached to it. The emphasis that Nora is a child with difficulties, I do believe Nora could have been then subsequently released by captors who would have understood that it would be impossible to move with Nora or that she is a vulnerable child and not necessarily what they quite anticipated,” she added.
She also insisted that it was not possible for her daughter to have reached the site where her body was found, in an oil palm plantation not far from the resort from where she went missing, for several reasons as well.
“I don't believe Nora would have ventured off a main path into a dense jungle given how frightened, shy, cautious she was as a human.
“I also don't believe that if she went there, let's remember it's extremely close in terms of physical distance that I feel like she would have been seen because on numerous days by numerous teams that area was thoroughly searched as well as all around. So I believe she would have been seen,” she said.
Maintaining her abduction theory, Meabh also said her daughter was physically incapable of traversing the vast jungle due to her health condition which limited her cognitive response and motor skills.
She also described in detail of Nora’s condition — holoprosencephaly — an abnormality of brain development in which the brain doesn't properly divide into the right and left hemispheres
“She would approach most situations with extreme nervousness. Nora was not curious, she relied exclusively on what was familiar and what she experienced.
“She didn't wander about other places and never asked about going anywhere. She spent most of her time at home with people she knew well,” she said, adding that Nora would freeze and stare at the floor when faced with an obstacle or the unknown.
Stories of children abducted for cultural and ritual practices
Meabh also told the court how she had reasons to believe her daughter was abducted for spiritual or cultural practices through press clippings reported locally and internationally.
“I’m aware of cultural practices in a number of countries and Malaysia is one of them where children are abducted for spiritual or cultural practices whereby a vulnerable child would be a more attractive person to abduct and that is to do with local ritual and cultural practice and I read a bit about it,” she said.
She then recounted a number of interactions the family had with local medicine men or healers with one in particular encounter involving a local shaman calling on the spirit of the jungle to deliver Nora back to her kin.
“The entourage explained to us that they believe Nora was taken for ritual practices by mysterious forces and they were calling on these spirits to come back and that these were instances where children were taken and kept by forest spirits.
“Obviously you can imagine that is not in our local practice here, I have never heard about things like that prior to going into Malaysia specifically and so we wanted to respect that and give due course to that.
“So I was intrigued by that which led me to begin then read about, not just about the mysterious side of cultural practice but also some physical aspect of that might have been,” she said.
Quoirin, a 15-year-old with learning difficulties, disappeared from The Dusun resort last year where she had been staying with her London-based family, triggering a 10-day hunt involving helicopters, search dogs and hundreds of searchers.
Her nude body was later discovered close to the jungle retreat and an autopsy found that she probably starved and died of internal bleeding after spending about a week in the dense rainforest.
